Squeezebox server samba mount – raspi 3, Max2Play 2.45, Ubuntu server 16.04

[andrew283 premium]

andrew283 premium

15. Februar 2018 at 7:44 #34016

I am a complete noob with raspi and Max2Play. I landed here after coming across a multiroom install highlighted over at HiFiBerry. I received the Pi as a gift and had been pondering a useful application. This seems to me to be a brilliant use for it.

I’m running Mx2Play version 2.45, with the premium license. The bluetooth, Squeezebox server and multisqueeze plugins are installed.

The Ubuntu server has a shared folder for all of our audio and is shared by user, across the network. I struggled for a day or two trying to get it installed via the Filesystem mount tab, rather unsuccessfully but I’d forgotten much of what I’d learned during the the server build.

First thing was to create a new user called „mainpi“ on the server, and assign it to the user group that has access to the //server/share. Using SSH with the raspi, I successfully mounted //server/share to /mnt/music and added it to /etc/fstab. When the pi reboots, the fileshare remounts and shows in the filesystem mount tab. From the raspi CLI, I can enter and access the files in /mnt/music. So far so good.

However, this isn’t reflected in the Squeezebox server interface. The shared folder does not show up in the menu selection on the Squeezebox settings „Basic“ tab, when using the Browse feature for the Media folders. If I enter it manually, the system tries to rescan, but the finds no files.

Scanner Log:
[18-02-14 21:39:34.0312] Slim::Utils::Scanner::Local::rescan (181) Discovering audio files in /mnt/music
[18-02-14 21:39:34.0618] Slim::Utils::Scanner::Local::Async::__ANON__ (71) Error scanning file or folder: /mnt/music: Permission denied
—
Going back to the raspi CLI, I installed sox and can play files in /mnt/music from the command line.

-rw-rw—- 1 root users 3062932 Oct 18 2005 track.mp3

01 Track.mp3:

File Size: 3.06M Bit Rate: 128k
Encoding: MPEG audio
Channels: 2 @ 16-bit Track: 1
Samplerate: 44100Hz
Replaygain: off Artist: Bach
Duration: 00:03:11.43 Title: 01 Track

I’m not sure where to go from here now. Does Squeezebox use it’s own credentials to access the files?

[Heiner premium]

Heiner premium

15. Februar 2018 at 15:53 #34024

Hi andrew,

Best way to mount with Max2Play is to use the Filesystem Mount menu of our web interface. You’ll just have to enter the credentials as stated in the examples shown below each parameter and click save to mount any share in the directory of your choice.
Please do make sure to delete the manual mount beforehand.

Regarding the scan issue, please make sure that the files and folders do not have any special rights, protections or formats, to rule those out as possible sources of error.

Here’s a wiki entry on the steps to take

[andrew283 premium]

andrew283 premium

15. Februar 2018 at 18:26 #34028

Thank you Heiner. I will try this when I am home this evening.

What does using the Max2Play GUI form do that isn’t done by adding //<IPaddress>/<ShareName> /<mountPoint> cifs user=<userName>,pass=<passwd> 0 0 to /etc/fstab?

[andrew283 premium]

andrew283 premium

16. Februar 2018 at 7:26 #34029

I grew frustrated with things, and started with a fully clean install of M2P, careful to avoid any of the errors I’d made previously. I successfully used the filesystem mount tab to mount the samba from my home server with no drama. Once again however, it did not show up under the LMS /mnt/ folder drop-down so I added it manually. Once more, the scan shows a permission error

[18-02-15 21:59:29.3080] Slim::Utils::Scanner::Local::rescan (181) Discovering audio files in /mnt/itunes
[18-02-15 21:59:29.3377] Slim::Utils::Scanner::Local::Async::__ANON__ (71) Error scanning file or folder: /mnt/itunes: Permission denied

pi@Mainpi:/media/ZZ Top $ ls -l /mnt/
total 4
drwxrwx--- 2169 root users    0 Feb 15 22:06 itunes
drwxrwxrwx    2 root root  4096 Jun 30  2016 mpd

I’m not sure where to proceed from here unfortunately, but will update this thread when I eventually sort it out.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by andrew283. Reason: formatting

[andrew283 premium]

andrew283 premium

18. Februar 2018 at 7:55 #34039

Solved.

I copied a track from the samba share /mnt/itunes into /mnt/mpd, changed the folder and track permissions to 777 and scanned the folder with success. Then I changed the permissions to those shown in /mnt/itunes for both directory (770) and track (540), re-scanned the folder and the music disappeared from LMS.

All folders needed on /mnt/itunes needed to changed to 775, at the server.
sudo find /srv/nas/itunes -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
All files had to be changed to 664.
sudo find /srv/nas/itunes -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
Obviously this needed to be done from the Ubuntu server end as Max2Play user pi will not be a sudoer on the network server.

[Heiner premium]

Heiner premium

26. Februar 2018 at 12:32 #34084

Hi andrew,

Sorry about the late response. I was on holiday over the last week.

I am happy that you found your own solution, nonetheless, you should be able to mount a SambaShare right in LMS. Did you try selecting the parent folder mnt/ itself for LMS?

[andrew283 premium]

andrew283 premium

10. April 2020 at 19:59 #48466

I recently had to start from scratch when the PI started acting up. I once again ran into problems trying to get the mount point from my Ubuntu share connected via the Max2Play GUI interface. I was hoping that this ancient thread of mine had the answer but instead I see I just responded that I made it work.

Having now run through the same steps as I did previously to solve the problem, I wanted to leave the solution here. The mount type for Ubuntu samba shares is (for me at least) NFS. nope…at least, not on it’s own.

I wish there was some feedback on that errors. Instead of „Mount point not created“, perhaps „No share of type CIFS on this connection. Try NFS“.

Answer: Use the IP address and not the server name. While I can easily connect to //media-server/music using the credentials created for M2P from a Windows machine, the Raspi requires in be entered with the ip address – it can’t resolve the server name for some reason. And it helps if everything is spelled correctly.

So – for my future self: Use the IP address, spell the samba folder name correctly (case matters), yes it’s cifs.
It’s always so easy to watch the video, but that doesn’t work here for whatever reason.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by andrew283. Reason: Was not the fix
• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by andrew283.

[Manawatu premium]

Manawatu premium

3. Juni 2020 at 4:08 #48937

Hi Andrew
A couple of years ago I had similar frustration with /mnt/Music. So I learned some basic things about samba and permissions and then poked noob-ly at the problem for many days. I have long since forgotten what my train of investigation was……. but I did land on a solution that has continued to work. I thought I’d add my experience to your thread, for the benefit of our future selves 🙂
In Max2play Filesystem Mount, my parameters are:

//192.168.1.5/c/media/Music <<<<Yes the use of IP address was important
/mnt/Music
cifs <<<<I played with NFS, but cifs works for me.
user=<myusername>,password=<mypasswd>,sec=ntlm,iocharset=utf8,vers=1.0,uid=squeezeboxserver <<<<The vers and uid declarations were keys to solving my permissions problem, although I do not recall exactly why.

Cheers, Scott